Hostage swap officer in SW France attacks critically wounded

Gendarmerie Lt-Col Arnaud Beltrame, 45, who voluntered to swap places with a woman taken hostage as a human shield by a Moroccan-French national Redouane Lakdim who, acting in the name of the Islamic State group had taken over a supermarket in south-west France after killing three people in separate attacks, was on Friday in hospital in a critical condition after being shot several times by the 25-year-old gunman before a special-forces police unit stormed the store.